Before the commencement ceremony got under way in the football stadium at Redondo Union High School on Friday afternoon, Principal Nicole Wesley introduced a few special guests.

There was the honorable trustees of the Redondo Beach school board, the distinguished members of the Redondo Beach City Council, the superintendent of the school district.

Oh, and there was the 42nd president of the United States of America, sitting in the crowded visitor bleachers with his wife, the nation's current secretary of state.

After a hearty introduction and applause, Bill Clinton - uncle to graduate Tyler Clinton - strode across a section of the football field to give the school's commencement address. His voice a little muffled by an extra echoey sound system, Clinton promised to keep it short, and then proceeded to deliver a 15-minute address.

"I have been told you will know what I mean if I say you are about to graduate from the finest high school in the South Bay," he said, in reference to Superintendent Steven Keller's favorite catch phrase.

Clinton praised the school for its top-flight girls cross-country team, its high number of scholarship winners, its strong academic decathlon crew and its award-winning journalism program.

"And according to my nephew, you beat (rival) Mira Costa for the first time in lacrosse, and again in football," he said, causing the crowd to roar in approval.

But it didn't take long for Clinton to get philosophical.

Standing at a podium in the end zone, Clinton reminded the cap-and-gown-clad graduates - 90 percent of whom will be attending a two- or four-year college - that the unemployment rate for college graduates is half that of the overall U.S. workforce.

"More and more people with specialized skills are finding good jobs," he said.

Today's educated young Americans, Clinton added, still have the luxury of choosing what they do for a living.

"Most of the people who have ever lived on Earth and about half of the people alive today on Earth had no choice about what they are going to do when they grow up," he said.

Clinton encouraged the students to take chances.

"Most high schools have reunions about every five years," he said. "My high school does, and I've only missed one, in 48 years. The saddest among my classmates are not those who have failed. ... The saddest ones are those who had dreams and did not try to achieve them."

Clinton closed his speech with what he said is the No. 1 question in the world today: "What's more important, our differences, or our common humanity?

"I spent a lot of your parents' tax money when I was president to sequence the human genome," he said.

This research found that all humans are 99.5 percent the same biologically.

"Don't you think it's interesting that ... we spend 99 percent of our time obsessing on the half of a percent of us that's different, and almost no time thinking about the 99 percent-and-a-half of us that we share in common," he said.

The school clearly took pains to ensure that the Clintons' visit didn't overshadow the importance of the event. The program booklet, for instance, mentioned "Guest speaker Bill Clinton" in the same-size font as the rest of the names, about a third of the way down the page.

Redondo Beach school officials also restricted the press to an area on the sidelines at least 80 yards away from the podium, leaving Clinton so far away his face was not visible without the aid of a large zoom.

Principal Wesley also sought to downplay any political overtones.

"A great president once said, `Education is the civil rights issue of our time,"' she said when introducing the speaker. "That great president is ... George W. Bush."

She went on to quote another American president: "As every parent knows, a good education is a gift that keeps on giving for a lifetime. That great president left office with the highest approval ratings of any president since World War II. ... That great president is here."

Clinton has long been supportive of his nephew Tyler, the son of Clinton's half-brother, Roger. Four years ago, Clinton attended Tyler's eighth-grade ceremony from Riviera Hall Lutheran School in Torrance.

In 2001, Clinton showed up at the school unannounced, arriving by motorcade. With Secret Service agents keeping vigil outside, Clinton hung out in Tyler's classroom, chatting with the second-graders about their favorite school subjects and later posing for photos in an impromptu assembly with teachers, students and parents.